


From our fragments we built gods

by Catherines_Collections



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Cisco Ramon Becomes Vibe, Gen, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, Reverb lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-23 01:42:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9635174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/pseuds/Catherines_Collections
Summary: “We could be gods,” comments Reverb, promises laced between the words.Cisco just smiles, "Show me."





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was such a pain in the butt to write; I've had this idea, written small bits and pieces here and there, for four months. Really this isn't even how I first imagined it, originally it was gonna be a lot darker, but oh well. Also, it's very messy and may not even make sense so, sorry.
> 
> I just really loved Earth-2 and Cisco Ramon and Reverbs iconic line, "We could be gods." is the inspiration for this fic. 
> 
> I own nothing, please enjoy:)!

Reverb faces him and there are millions of ways this can go, will go, and have gone. Timelines pile onto one another. Thousands of Cisco Ramon’s bite back responses, thousands spit out words like a poison intended to burn, and thousands never get a chance to say anything at all.

The timelines shift and alter, nothing is ever the same, and he doesn’t even try to pretend he isn’t intoxicated by it. 

.

In one timeline – more than one really because there is never only one timeline for anything as every decision has infinite consequences, but this is the clearest, most absolute one – he takes Reverb’s goggles as his doppelganger lies silent and bloody on the filthy ground beneath them. 

He doesn’t think of the possible effects in this timeline, not on what could happen to Barry or Jesse or even Harry if something were to happen to him, and he especially doesn’t think about Caitlyn sitting all alone in a cold and dark STAR labs with frozen hands or the possibility of becoming one of Zoom’s henchmen. He stares at the corpse of his doppelganger lying at his feet as he holds the goggles and wonders.

(How do the goggles work? Why does just holding them make his skin prickle and heart beat with a need he doesn’t know how to fulfill? Why do the goggles feel so warm in his palm when they’ve had nothing but a cooled corpse to stabilize their temperature? Why does holding the glasses make him feel as though he’s regained a piece of himself he didn’t know he was missing?)

How different is Reverb from Vibe?) 

His curiosity gets the best of him, too many thoughts and rationales available to simply be ignored, and he consoles himself by thinking: it’s for science. He presses his eyes shut and breaths in as he lowers the goggles over his head. 

The moment he opens his eyes the world peels open before him. 

“Oh,” he breathes out. The feeling is a mixture of ecstasy and agony; it’s the thrill of knowing, the pleasure of predicting, along with the fear and pain of the consequences for decisions yet to be made: it’s pure unadulterated bliss. 

When he takes off the goggles, and really they fall off more than anything because there is no way he would have the strength or resilience to pull them off himself, he finds Barry and Earth-2 Iris lying on the ground behind him. The earth feels funny beneath his feet and for a moment he swears he sees strings so he shuts his eyes tightly, and takes a deep breath. When he opens them again there is nothing. He runs a hand through his hair and lets out a shaky sigh. 

He slips the goggles behind his back and into his pocket while he turns, and the world goes fuzzy for a moment. It hits him how exhausted he feels and the world swirls again. He places a shaky palm over his stomach and breathes.

(Count, he reminds himself, one, two, three).

Barry’s groaning, having taken a beating from a man nearly ten times as powerful as him, but manages to steal a quick glance at Cisco and then back while still under a frantic Iris’ care. Her hands splay over his face and body, searching for injuries that have already healed while mumbling curses under her breath she must have learnt from her days on the force. The scene seems so old to him, so permanent, so repetitive, so final; he’s seen it so many times. He feels like he’s been traveling timelines for years.

Barry rips his eyes away from Iris for a moment and offers Cisco a winded look.

“Dude,” Barry sighs, taking a moment to glance at Cisco from his position on the ground, Iris planted by his and finished searching for injuries, and his eyebrows knit together in a worried expression that replace his earlier discomfort when Cisco doesn’t respond immediately: no sudden quip, painful pun, or death joke.

Barry’s frown deepens, “Cisco, you ok man?” 

He wants to say yes, smile and nod and actually be ok, but honestly he’s not sure if he is. Barry’s talking to him like he’s only missed seconds when he feels like he’s missed years. He feels different, older, stronger. He feels hungry - starved even, like he’s been deprived of something vital - and he’s not sure what for. This situation is the worst case of Déjà Vu he’s ever had.

Barry looks more concerned with each passing quiet moment and Earth-2 Iris, even if she doesn’t know him, begins to sense something’s up, arching an eyebrow at Cisco as he continues to stand silent and motionless.

He can’t explain what happened, not with his dead double lying ten feet away from him and Barry still healing, so he does what he does best. He shakes his head slightly like he’s shaking off the situation and smacks a crooked grin on his face that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. He lets out a wry laugh that scratches his throat on the way out.

“Dude, I just saw myself die. I don’t think I’ll ever be ok again.”

.

When they get back home Barry doesn’t mention anything about Reverb, but Cisco sees the second too long looks and speculative glances, and he’s smart enough to know never to mention them. 

Barry doesn’t stop looking, but he gets distracted, sidetracked. He gets caught up with Meta’s and girls and drooling after Iris, and somewhere along the way Cisco gets left somewhere in the background. Not that’s he’s complaining; there’s been an inch beneath his skin he hasn’t been able to scratch since Barry began staring.

It’s nearly a week after Barry stops watching him that he pulls out Reverb’s goggles.

.

There’s a nagging voice in his head he can’t really hear and memories of things left unfinished – roads left untraveled, strings cut and yet to be mended, strings to actually cut – it’s all very complex and confusing and suddenly he’s exhausted from the strenuous thoughts.

He shakes away the feelings.

.

Cisco feels Harry’s eyes on him in the lab when he’s trying to test his goggles. Harry stands in front of him, and he’s so close Cisco can feel his breath on his face. He grabs Cisco’s shoulders and his pulse picks up. 

“Practice Ramon,” whispers Well’s and Cisco has to remind himself that it’s Harry talking to him – touching him -- not Harrison, not Eobard, “adrenaline is key remember?” 

Cisco nods his head and licks his lips nervously. He hates testing. He hates Harry’s implementation of the test, and he hates these goggles. Mentally he scolds himself for training now, unsupervised with a Harrison Well’s -- multiple Earths be damned. The only Well’s he ever got to know wasn’t even a Well’s through blood, just some time traveling maniac obsessed with Barry and his own power, so all in all he’s never had a particularly good experience with one; and really what’s to keep them all from being power hungry maniacs? – in an empty lab with reinforced walls while wearing goggles that make his brain ache.

“Cisco,” breathes out Well’s, his voice lower than usual and much too familiar. Cisco feels his breaths come out irregular and sharp and all he can think about is a hand through his chest and a man he admired so much staring down at him with a look of finality. He hates this, hates the trigger of the goggles, the adrenaline that rushes through his system every time he practices with them, and he hates himself for teaching Harry this trick. 

“Cisco,” Well’s breaths, as he brushes a finger across Cisco’s shoulder, and lightening shoots through his blood. “I’m so proud of you.” 

The lightening ignites beneath his skin, scorching through his veins, and as it reaches his heart he’s able to release a small gasp before he’s forcefully enveloped by blue.

.

There’s a doorway at the end of his vision.

It’s blue and fades when he looks too closely at it.

He thinks, I shouldn’t open it, and, there’s no way to tell what’s behind it.

He thinks, but I have to know, and twists the knob.

.

Curiosity, Caitlyn had once said over their lunch order of Chinese takeout before Star Labs had fallen and their city and lives were reduced to painful chaos, was his fatal flaw.

“You’re an Icarus you know.” She started, smiling into her carton of Kung-Pow chicken when he had scoffed indignantly at her words and declared them blasphemous. 

“You are though Cisco. You can’t help your curiosity; it’s a shining part of you, it’s one of the things that make you so great.”

He had preened at that, “Well thanks for that but you do realize that Icarus killed himself, right? The whole flying too close to the sun thing.” He waved his hands in the air and watched as a stray noodle flew off of a chopstick and onto the Lab’s otherwise pristine floor. He frowned at it.

He had watched as her smile became a composed frown and she dug deeper into her cardboard container before lifting her head up to meet his eyes, “Well Cisco if you ever feel you are flying too close to the sun, give me a call and I’ll do everything I can to pull you back.”

(He thinks of Icarus now and how he can taste the sun on his lips, feel the heat burning through his skin. He’s falling apart at the seams; melting his wax wings. 

It's glorious.)

.

There are many paths the door could take him down.

It could lead him to a new dimension he has yet to explore, or maybe more visions for his, or any other, timeline. It could, not that it has yet, lead him into a stream of chaos that would make it impossible for him to return home: at least, mentally.

These are the possibilities he expects, the scenarios he can predict, and the one the Universe has prepared him for.

(He should know by now that the universe never plays fair.)

He is in no way prepared to find himself in a familiar alleyway, walls tinted blue around the edges and cool air a bitter bite against his skin.

He’s even less prepared to find his doppelganger standing in front of him, smiling.

.

On the sleepless nights he doesn’t spend working he picks up the goggles Harry made for him and allows the cool material to slip down onto his face.

No matter how many times he wears them, practices with them, tests them, they never scratch the itch like Reverb’s had.

Harry’s goggles are controlled, cleanly cut visions prepared in portions and organized in a manner only he can understand: they attempt to calm the universe, manipulate her into compliance, but the universe has never enjoyed being tamed. The journey’s too smooth where it should be rocky and the paths take him by force to visions and timelines he doesn’t want to explore, forcefully pushing him through each door. It’s exhausting and mind numbing and he mumbles to himself everything wrong with Harry’s goggles as he slips on Reverb’s, trying to minimize the guilt.

Where Harry’s goggles are controlled Reverb’s are wild; one glance through them would be enough to drive a man to the brink of insanity. The visions are messy clips, colors blending with sounds and scenes, and they envelop each of his senses at once. It’s insane, and it’s addictive and he isn’t slammed through doorway and pushed down separate paths so he counts them as a win.

He spends a good portion of his nights trying to alter Harry’s goggles to act like Reverb’s.

He never can get it right.

When he begins to use Reverb’s goggles in his training to become Vibe he tries not to feel too guilty. 

(He doesn’t tell the others that he has Reverb’s goggles. The goggles don’t mean anything and they wouldn’t understand anyway so he keeps his training tool a secret.)

After awhile though – insomnia filled nights, constant visions, and previously unknown PTSD triggers -- the goggles slide on his face like they belong there and guilt becomes a faded memory released through a blissful sigh.

.

“We could be gods,” promises Reverb, and it’s surreal to see him standing there in his eyeliner and leather jacket wearing glory when their last – and first – time together ended with him dead by Cisco’s feet. He’s blurry like a dream and has the feel of a distant memory. Maybe he’s both.

Cisco tilts his head to the side, dream soft and dazed – puzzled and scared and thrilled all at once – and thinks of everything he’s learned, everything he has yet to figure out, and all of the possibilities his ability could gift him with. Reverb doesn’t charge towards him. He just stands smirking: waiting. 

(He knows a challenge when he sees one.)

So Cisco just smiles, stuffs his hands in his pockets, and says, “Really huh? Do tell me more.”

. 

He lives timeline after timeline in his head. Blue tingeing every edge of every corner of every possibility and leaving words imprinted in his mind and memories seared onto his soul. His mind is a gateway to other dimensions, a path to unknown timelines, and he laughs outlandishly at the sheer overwhelming force of it. The magnitude of his ability, and the inability of any of his friends and teammates to understand it, is both mystifying and horrific at the same time. 

Barry comes in once, at the same time Cisco is removing the goggles Harry made for him, and Barry flinches before taking a wobbly step back. He stares at Cisco for a moment, all wide innocent hero eyes and worriedly pursed lips, and Cisco stares back holding his breath. Eventually - he supposes he moves. Maybe an eye twitch or nose flare, really any unbidden sign of familiarity would do it - Barry releases a relieved laugh and walks over to offer him a pat on the shoulder.

“Sorry dude,” Barry apologizes, his signature shy smile finding its place on his tired face, “you freaked me out for a minute. You wouldn’t believe who you just looked like.”

Cisco laughs, and makes sure his eyes don’t wrinkle too tight or his smile stretch too thin, “Try me.”

.

“They don’t understand you, you know. Not like I would, like I do. Our ability is something new, something strange and precious. They’ll lock you away when they find out the full extent of it. Make you the prisoner when you should be the prince.”

Cisco rolls his eyes at Reverb’s bitter words and shakes his head. “No that– that’s not how we roll. They’ll understand, they always do, and we’ll figure it out together. We’re a team, we’re family, and it’s what we do.” 

Barry’s a Meta and not every Meta is bad he knows that, and his team knows that. They would understand he’s sure. But even so he can’t stop his mind from thinking about the cells beneath Star Labs. The cells filled with the Metas that no one knows how to handle; how to control. He coughs at the sudden dryness in his throat.

A smile grows on Reverb’s lips like he knows exactly what Cisco’s thinking and he clucks his tongue as he leans back against a blue tinged wall in the alleyway.

.

He has a lot of visions these days, and he blames them on all of the new stuff everyone keeps bringing into the lab. The visions mix into his dreams merge with reality. 

He doesn’t tell anyone how hard it can be to tell them apart.

.

Harry looks at him sometimes, when they are working together in the lab and trying to find a way to increase Barry’s speed, with the same expression Well’s – Thawne, he reminds himself – had when he studied Barry. It’s more than simple curiosity, nearly obsessive, more like an unbalanced mixture of unhealthy fascination and disturbing dissatisfaction with what he sees: no version of Harrison Well’s comes without their quirks. The stares leave something cold in their wake, dark and cold and brutally empty, and Cisco can’t help but wonder if one day it will be him on Harry’s observation table instead of the latest in speedster technology.

Cisco doesn’t always see the stares, as they often face away from each other working on separate projects, but he can feel the looks bearing into his back. 

If Harry’s stares could leave scars, he thinks, would his be above or below where Eobard ripped out his heart?

They don’t talk about it. Neither of them confront the stares or any other strange behavior really, and it’s an unwritten rule, Cisco thinks, up until the day Harry breaks it.

“Are you okay Ramon?” Harry asks. The lab’s empty, per usual, except for the two of them with everyone else working on separate projects, at work, or out for lunch. 

The question shocks him – more so the fact that Harry is willingly speaking to him in their secluded lab after their not so welcoming visit to Earth-2 – so much that he almost drops the project he’d been working on. For a second, one pointless second, he mistakes the intention of the question for kindness, and feels his lips stretch into an unbidden smile. Another second later he thinks the tone concern, and the next he connects the concern to Harry’s constant overbearing nature and worry for the well being of his daughter: not the well being of the over worked scientist originally asked.

His smile shatters like glass and he has never been happier to have his back facing Harry. 

Cisco swallows the bitterness bubbling up inside and leans further back in his spinney chair, stretches his arms above his head before turning, and placing one rather dramatically over his heart. He opens his mouth wide and feigns shock, “Why Harry, I never knew you cared!” 

Harry’s expression falls flat for a moment before souring as he turns and returns to the projects before him. He mumbles as he works, taking a moment to push up his glasses before resuming his work on their current project.

Cisco spins in his chair, lulling his head to the side before returning to his projects, Harry at his back once again, and sighs to himself.

“Never been better man.” He murmurs beneath his breath, “Never been better.”

.

His meetings – dreams, memories, visions – with Reverb become more and more often until they are a constant occurrence. It feels like they talk for hours in minutes.

After a while it gets harder and harder to sit quietly inside the Lab.

.

"Call me Vibe." Cisco says one day, eyes staring up at the sky, expression unreadable.

Reverb turns his head towards him slowly, searching, and chuckles, "All in good time, compadre. All in good time."

.

The goggles channel the timelines, narrow down the paths and allow him to pick a direction instead of being forcefully pushed into one. He sees endless paths, continuous strings, and threads destined to be cut no matter how many will suffer from their severing. He looks at the broken roads and severed strings, looks closer at the damaged people and the soon to be broken situations they will be connect to, and thinks: I can fix that. 

He searches out the paths of his team mates. The goggles allow him to observe every angle of every Barry Allen’s smile, catalog every pointed glance or laced word from Caitlyn Snow, and to memorize and predict every movement of any Harrison Well’s from any timeline.

He stares fate in the face with a knowing smile – as he holds the knowledge of endless universes and timelines at his finger tips – and says, no more. 

(What he does not see is that Fate laughs.)

.

“You could be so much more you know,” comments Reverb with Cisco’s head in his lap. They’re in the same blue tinged alley way he always meets him in. It’s the same one he will die in. They both know it. Neither of them says it.

“You can do things your Flash could only dream of doing. You could be a hero, a ruler,” he chuckles. “You could be a god.”

Reverb’s still talking when Cisco closes his eyes, and tries not to think about anything other than the stars above them.

.

As he travels and sees and Vibes he learns, and the timelines teach him this:

It is far too easy to get lost inside of your own head.

If you wander too far down the paths of the endless universes you may never return. 

Fate can be altered with restrictions.

Promises become irrelevant with time.

Severed strings do not mend. 

Every change, alternation, or addition you make comes at a cost.

You must provide payment.

No matter how much you see you do not know everything: you are not a god.

But you can be.

.

“When you said we could be gods,” Cisco begins hesitantly and watches as Reverb’s smirk becomes something darker, “what did you mean?”

Reverb laughs then, mirthful and deep and matching his grin, and inches further into Cisco’s space, cupping his face and running a thumb across his cheek. Cisco holds his gaze when Reverb tilts his head up with his thumb.

“Oh Cisco,” Reverb whispers and Cisco's eye twitches, "I think you already know.”

.

He doesn’t visit Reverb for a little while after that.

.

Jay dies, and yet, in the worst of ways, he doesn't.

Cisco accidently touches the helmet – cool metal against burning skin, stable and tangible and not blue – and for a moment the world explodes.

His lips move without his mind.

(Too caught up in blue walls and a black mask with sharp teeth and electric eyes and whywhywhy.)

Zoom is–

(What nightmares are composed of, the basic traits they should have seen: cruel and carnal and carless.)

Joe holds his head in his hands and breathes out slowly.

Zoom is–

(Death and pain and a blatant warning to watch yourself. To be careful of whom you chose to become.)

Barry stares at the glass case with blank eyes and reaches a shaky hand out towards it, but he’s careful not to touch.

Zoom is–

(A skilled liar. A killer with a heart shattered too many times for it to ever work properly, and a brain too tormented and delusional to ever correctly predict.) 

Caitlyn cries silent gleaming tears and can’t look at the case without retching. 

Zoom is–

(Too good at hiding in plain sight. A man with a mask too thick to see through. A list of all the signs they have been searching for and missed.)

Iris stares at the case, and then looks to Barry and Joe and Caitlyn, before walking to the computers where she begins typing.

Zoom is–

(Everything they should have seen and didn’t want to believe. The embodiment of expired hope cloaked in chosen wickedness. A soul composed of bitter resentment and pointless blame and petty rage that won’t revive the dead no matter how much anyone wishes it could.)

Harry laughs, cold and unhinged and so hard that he falls to his knees and curls into himself. 

Zoom is the monster they all feared he'd be, and Cisco looks around the room at each of his team mates, and makes a choice. 

.

The first time he tries Reverb’s goggles it’s an experiment.

It's pure curiousity, the taunting  what ifs that plague his mind relentlessly, the endless possibilities that his mind won't let go, and the sleep deprivation he's already suffering from that convince him to pick the goggles up.

When he does pick them up he prays -- that he won't become Reverb. That Barry and Iris will live and Barry will make it out without him. That he won't die from this and then have Harry revive him just so he can have the pleasure of killing Cisco himself -- before he slides them on. 

The second time isn’t much different.

The second time he puts on the goggles he hates himself for it, he really does, but he needs to know how they work. 

He needs to know why Harry’s don’t work the same; why he’s able to control where he goes with Reverb’s. He needs to know what the trigger is. His curiosity is an unquenchable thirst, a selfish hunger, but he thinks of all the nights he spent on his research projects, in school and college cooped up in a lab, the years he’s dedicated to Star Labs and all of the death and wreckage that came from it, and all he can think about is if he can learn to fix it: to prevent it. 

When it comes down to it his motive is beautifully simple, surrounded and overshadowed by complexities: he has to know.

Curiosity and prevention.

It’s that simple.

.

(It’s not)

.

“So I see you’ve finally learned,” says Reverb lying on his back and staring at the stars. Cisco spots a hint of a grin on his face and knows that Reverb can see him.

He crosses his arms, “How would you do it?” 

(The we goes unspoken. But so does the rage fueled why didn’t you tell me and the vitriolic accusation he wants to scream of you knew – you knew and Caitlyn cried and Barry left and Iris isn’t talking and Joe looks hopeless and Harry won’t leave the lab – and the somber and freeing thank you that makes him want to laugh and cry simultaneously.)

Reverb stands up, rolls his shoulder and turns to face Cisco.

“Are you accepting my offer?” he purrs and Cisco thinks of Reverb’s promises – he thinks of prevention and a functioning Star Labs. He thinks of a Caitlyn Snow with a few less heartbreaks and a Barry Allen who still has a toothy smile but no super speed. He thinks of a Central City with no Metas and a less active police force. He thinks of a cop who spends less time with his unit and more with his daughter whose studying journalism and son who lives with them both. He thinks of a happy and peaceful Harrison Wells and a productive and safe Star Labs – and his wonder at the possibilities bleeds into something breathtaking. 

He lets his arms fall to his sides and nods. Reverb’s smirk grows teeth.

“Oh, this,” Reverb breathes, stepping closer until he’s in Cisco’s face, warm breath flitting across his cheeks and something wild swimming in his eyes, “is going to be fun.”

Cisco grins and this time it’s Reverb who shivers.

.

There are dreams, memories, and timelines where Reverb dies before his eyes and it feels like losing a piece of himself he never even knew he had. Timelines where Caitlyn freezes things with her bare hands, frostbitten lips turned up in a bittersweet snarl, and Barry never even learns their names. There are times where Joe West is remembered by a tombstone and Iris West doesn’t make it past nineteen. 

There are times where his powers drive him to madness and he becomes nothing more than another Meta, but at least Dante survives.

There are timelines where when Reverb says, “We could be gods.” He doesn’t take the bait.

(There are timelines he never picks up the goggles, but he doesn't spend too much time on those.)

He watches happier timelines as well although they’re not necessarily happy.

Like when Barry Allen lives on never having been the Flash, married to Iris West and visiting Joe on the weekends. He watches Caitlyn lose hope in succeeding in her field and return home to live with her mom while Ronnie works hundreds of miles away. He watches Eobard attempt to pass into their timeline only to be shredded into atoms by the speed force.

He watches eternities unfold before his eyes, repeating and restarting. Beginning and ending.

It’s timeline after timeline and they live and die and live again, and the strings around him quiver and transition and solidify or snap.

All the while Reverb stands at his back and smiles.

.

“We could be gods,” promises Reverb, and he’s been here before millions of times in millions of universes yet the promises laced in-between the words still makes him shiver, and he has to force himself to forget how familiar that filthy smirk is.

Cisco ¬ thinks of Barry behind him and Harry in the city and Caitlyn all alone in the labs, and then he thinks about the Meta’s locked in the basement. He thinks about everything and everyone he could stand to lose and then thinks about how the threads tying together the universe had felt against his fingertips as he cut and tied them apart and together as he had pleased; he thinks of how the universe will taste on his tongue and how hot wax will feel as it melts from his wings and burns into his skin. He thinks: curiosity and prevention, freedom and exhilaration. He thinks: I can fix it – just smiles and says, “Show me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you liked it, and comments and Kudos are much appreciated! I'm on tumblr at rhymesofblue so come check me out!:)


End file.
